50 Books Challenge 2023 Part Six

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the sixth thread of the 50 Books Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2023, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, it’s not too late to join, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

The first thread of the year is here, the second one here, the third one here here, the fourth one here and the fifth one: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/4793238-50-books-challenge-2023-part-five?page=20&reply=126860721

What are you reading?

I just looked back at my post and realised it made barely any sense - I meant to say I was definitely interested more in some questions than others.

@eitak22 Dead Famous is on my list but I think I’ll leave a gap before starting that.

@Piggywaspushed I really liked The Sixteen Trees of the Somme by Lars Mytting which is partly set in Norway before moving to the Shetlands and France. I’m struggling to think of any others set in Norway but there’s The Summer Book by Tove Jansson set in Finland, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Trilogy set in Sweden and The Sealwoman’s Gift and Burial Rites in Iceland.

Has to be Norway. Wouldn't want to cause Nordic outrage!

I know a lot of people on here liked the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy starting with The Wreath by Sigrid Undset & set in medieval Norway @Piggywaspushed - I DNFed it but I think I just wasn't in the mood when I had it out of the library.

I just bought Love Will Tear Us Apart (The Stranger Times 3), The Social Distance Between Us’, The Cloisters , The Favour (Nicci French) and The Haunting Of Las Lagrimas

I am officially beyond help or intervention wrt to buying books.
If you have any of those titles on your Wish List then watch out for them being reduced to 99p in the near future, because that always happens when I buy Kindle books with only a few £ off.

Just read Little Monsters by Adrienne Broader, which was a review copy someone gave me. It's set in Cape Cod and that area is very well evoked. It's told over the summer of 2016 from the point of view of 5 people: Adam, a marine biologist who is about to turn 70, his two middle-aged children Ken and Abby, Ken's wife Jenny, and new mother Steph who is holidaying in the area. Adam has decided to stop taking his schizophrenia medication to get one last revelation about humpback whales before he dies. Ken is preparing for a republican candidacy and seeing a therapist after his wife caught him in an internet chatroom. Abby is an artist and is producing her most original work for a decade, and Jenny is drinking too much. This was quite good - the male characters are generally flawed misogynists while the female characters are creative and more in touch with their surroundings. Feminism and optimism are linked as it's set against the backdrop of Hillary Clinton expected to become the next US president. The whole book builds up to Adam's 70 birthday party. It was very readable, but I think more child have been made of the ending, a solid 4.

I think Dead Famous is significantly better than Ask A Historian and A Million Years in a Day is his best I think. He is a great Twitter, podcast and festival historian, and I like his chatty style, but it does mean his books are a little light sometimes. Ask A Historian would be one of those books like '100 History Facts' books you find in places like The Works. I've met him once or twice and interacted on Twitter and he is cool.

No personal recommendations, but Trip Fiction usually comes up trumps.

www.tripfiction.com/find-a-book/?location=norway&btitle=&bauthor=&genre=Genre...

@Piggywaspushed , a member of my book group is Norwegian, and she introduced me to Roy Jacobsen's Barroy books, about life on a remote Norwegian island. I am a big fan! The Unseen is the first book in the series, but can be read as a standalone. It traces the life of Ingrid from her childhood onward.

Ah, @mackerella , I was at Cambridge in the first half of the 90s, so we missed each other! 😀

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit , about JD Vance and Hillbilly Elegy, it's indeed a compelling book in some ways, but I was annoyed when I read it by the right-wing political slant and the idea that the poor would be fine if only they had a better work ethic! Politically and ideologically, Vance is on the opposite side of the spectrum to Barbara Kingsolver. In recent years his right-wing politics have come out even more strongly; he was a huge Trump supporter, and now he's a senator for Ohio. Groan. Personally I can't stand the guy. A friend of mine gave me a copy of Hillbilly Elegy as a gift when it came out ('you're American, you will like this!'), and even though I'm glad I read it, I actually donated it to a charity shop after reading it; it made me so indignant I didn't want it in my house 😂

Piggy I would second The Unseen, which I read on the back of a previous recommendation from Cassandre.

I also like I Curse the River of Time and Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson.

Thanks! I will look these up!

Continuing my duff run of books:
The List by Yomi Adegoke Gorgeous black influencer couple counting down the 30 days to their huge instagram perfect wedding find their lives start to fall apart when Michael's name appears on an anonymous #MeToo list. He swears he is innocent, but is he? This should have been pacy and interesting but was way too long for the content and the narrative was very flat and dull with far too many unimportant (to the story) elements and people introduced. Apparently, it has already been picked up for a TV dramatisation - I can see it fitting that Monday/Tuesday night mediocre to dire slot.

Tom Lake - Ann Patchett Sugary sweet and cloying story set during the pandemic when 3 adult daughters return to their parents idyllic cherry farm to help pick the harvest ( as seasonal workers aren't allowed). To pass the time their mother tells them in infuriating (to me) detail the story of how securing a role in the local amateur dramatic production of "Our Town" led to her trying to have a Broadway career and her relationship with a now very famous actor. This was way too Pollyannish , let's put on a play! gee, aren't folks nice! for me. I needed some grit and there was none to be found. Lots of people will love it - it's so darn positive!

I have just finished The Bookbinder of Jericho by Pip Williams. I very much enjoyed her first novel The Dictionary of Lost Words and this book is connected to it, but not a sequel. I enjoyed this less. Its subject covers women in WWI, women's education, the Belgians and, more fleetingly, suffrage. It was OK but it lacked the charm of the first book and the love of words. Her depiction of Belgians left me unconvinced. Even the name choices jarred occasionally.

Interestingly, the main character , Peggy, falls in love with a badly disfigured Belgian soldier , and the random number generator has thrown up The Facemaker as my next book. I am looking forward immensely to this but know it will be harrowing.

My latest few reads:

The Neighbour by Gemma Rogers

This was pretty rubbish - luckily it was on prime reading so I didn’t pay for it. A woman and her daughter move on to a lovely cul de sac. However the neighbours seem odd and she finds out that the woman who previously lived in her house has disappeared. Not very well written and the ending was poor.

Zero Days by Ruth Ware

Another disappointing one which is a shame as I usually enjoy her books. Here the main character, a woman called Jack, goes on the run when she’s suspected of killing her husband, and tries to find out who did kill him. Unfortunately it’s obvious quite early on who did it so this doesn’t have much tension and I found it rather boring as Jack just kept hiding in different places.

The Other Mothers by Katherine Faulkner

This was ok. A journalist investigating the death of a young woman gets drawn into a circle of posh mums. I didn’t really like any of the characters but the story did keep me interested.

Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith

This was great. Strike and Robin investigate several suspects who might have sent them a severed leg. This kept me gripped and I raced through it in a day.

To The Manor Born by Peter Spence

Novelisation of the TV programme. Interesting to get some extra detail that wasn’t in the TV programme but some things are changed for no obvious reason which was a bit annoying. Nice nostalgia though!

I love this juxtaposition more than I can express. This thread has everything!

As you are all so eclectic in your tastes and well read, this leads me to...I took two 18 year olds to The Crucible last night and it blew their minds. They both want "books about Salem" - I suspect one is more interested in the historical and psychological angles of the witch trials and one would prefer fiction or books about witchcraft in general. Any recommendations? I read The Witches by Stacy Schiff last year but found it a bit of a slog.

36 To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

I read this when I was a teenager and swore never to read it again because I thought it was tedious and pointless. But I bought a Kindle copy of Mrs Dalloway which also included this and when I loved that, I thought this also deserved another go. And it's brilliant. I think Virginia Woolf just got people. Maybe a very specific type and age of people, since her books obviously didn't speak to me as a teenager, but this time I found something insightful on virtually every page. It is sublimely written as well, of course. The section in the middle where time passes is masterful and very, very sad. The sense of the house as a character worked better here than in anything else I've read. Anyway, I'm a total convert. I suspect I shall have to read Orlando.

As we're nearly on a new thread, I feel emboldened to say (well, repeat) that I can't get on with David Mitchell, love the bloody boring butler, liked NLMG and thought A Farewell to Arms was great, but haven't read any other Hemingway.

Sorry we missed each other, @cassandre!

@@Piggywaspushed coincidentally, my book group is reading Novel 11, Book 18 by the Norwegian writer Dag Solstad this month. But I'll be on holiday when they discuss it, so I haven't read it. The synopsis sounds a bit bonkers!

Pepe talking of eclectic, the first three books that came to mind when I read your post were Good Omens, The Mercies and Lolly Willowes, but I'm not sure that any of them (except possibly the middle one) are quite what you're looking for

Piggy I assumed that The Bookbinder of Jericho was going to be another "The Practitioner of Quirky Profession of Exotic Locale" type book, but it seems not! (And I gather that it's Jericho in Oxford, not Palestine, as the title had led me to assume...)

Welsh dammit, I've had a loathing of Virginia Woolf for the last 30 years, and now you're making me wonder whether I've now become the "specific type and age" of person who would get her. Maybe it's time to give her another go?

@mackerella I can only speak for myself but it was a revelation! Although it turns out Margaret Atwood had a similar one:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2002/sep/07/classics.margaretatwood

I noticed Bookbinder dropped the of Jericho bit for US publication, presumably to avoid confusion!

As you are all so eclectic in your tastes and well read, this leads me to...I took two 18 year olds to The Crucible last night and it blew their minds. They both want "books about Salem" - I suspect one is more interested in the historical and psychological angles of the witch trials and one would prefer fiction or books about witchcraft in general. Any recommendations? I read The Witches by Stacy Schiff last year but found it a bit of a slog.

Pepe I've not read it, but I have this on my wishlist after reading a good review of it when it came out; it might fit one of your 18 year olds:

https://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/stock/the-ruin-of-all-witches-life-and-death-in-the-new-world-malcolm-gaskill

I haven't reviewed for a while, sorry - life's been crazy busy:

Who I Am - Melanie C. Straightforwardly told memoir from the former Spice girl, a more interesting autobiography than most with her insights into her memtal health struggles over the years. Protracted at times, but worth a read if you're a fan.

The Happy Couple - Naoise Dolan. I quite liked Exciting Times, but this was tedious and lost steam half way through. There were too many characters to keep track of and their voices weren't differentiated enough by the author. The story - a couple planning their wedding, and their friends opinions on the central couple's relationship - also needed more development. Disappointing.

The Good Drinker - Adrian Chiles. Sort of memoir from the TV presenter, as he tells his life story and how it's intertwined and influenced by his drinking. He's now moderated his drinking after being a big drinker for many years. Interesting to note how much his relationships have been influenced by his drinking and made me reflect, as he does, how boozing can strengthen and build relationships, with some people.

These threads are moving more quickly this year than usual, anyone else notice this?

55. Last Dance at the Discotheque for Deviants by Paul David Gould

To be honest I mostly picked this up on the strength of the title, but I'm really glad I did. A definite bold, & one of my top reads so far this year.

Kostya is a young gay man in early 90s Moscow. Having moved there from a provincial city, he hopes to find a job in theatre, and to find love. Instead, he dies mysteriously in the aftermath of a hate attack on a gay disco.

In a series of flashbacks his story is interspersed with that of Jamie, an English 20-something working at a Moscow newspaper, & Dima, film actor & Kostya's ex-boyfriend, as they try to uncover what has happened to him.

This is as much a book about the struggles of being young & gay in Moscow in the early 90s as it is a mystery novel. I found the characters very convincing, & the ending totally believable. Overall sad but an excellent read, & one I'm sure I'll re-read in the future.

We are going at a rate of about once a month I think.